Online Library of Selected Images:
-- U.S. NAVY SHIPS --

USS Bering Strait (AVP-34), 1944-1948

USS Bering Strait, a 1,766-ton Barnegat class
small seaplane tender, was built at Houghton, Washington, and
was commissioned in July 1944. Following shakedown off the west
coast and further training in Hawaiian waters, she proceeded to
the Marianas where she served as a tender to a squadron of air-sea
rescue aircraft in March 1945. She then moved with her squadron
to Okinawa, where she remained until the end of December 1945.
Returning to the U. S., she was decommissioned at Alameda, California,
in June 1946.

In September 1948 Bering Strait was loaned to the Coast
Guard as the cutter Bering Strait (WAVP-382, later WHEC-382).
She served out of Seattle, Washington and San Francisco, California,
primarily on weather station duty, for most of her Coast Guard
career. She was transferred to South Vietnam as Tran Quan Kha
in January 1971. She became the Philippine Diego Silang
in April 1976 and was decommissioned in June 1985.